


What God Has Abandoned

by walk_in_sunshine



Category: Redwall Series - Brian Jacques
Genre: Gen, OC-heavy, Post-Series, Something's Rotten in Redwall, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:55:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29435679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walk_in_sunshine/pseuds/walk_in_sunshine
Summary: Times have changed in Mossflower Country. A mercenary and a noble come upon Redwall Abbey, and there is a dark secret fueling the spirit that haunts its halls. Post Series, OC-heavy.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

He'd seen the look on her face before, when they were children. She'd insisted she wasn't flushing, that it was the chap of wind and the rush of adrenalin-

- _you're it! You're it! Cyrus!-_

She was ill the next morning. And all the next week. Half the season she laid abed, and the long hours of his mother's workdays were miserable without her company and he found himself in far more trouble than he'd been in since ever moving to the Lord's Domain.

"We will stop near here."

A sudden chill breeze rustled his whiskers. She had an ear cocked toward him, listening, waiting. He'd spoke in the woodland tongue, hoping to familiarize her with the staccato pattern. Sighing, he cast about for a safe place.

" _We'll take a rest nearby, Nova."_

The burned out ruin of a church stood dismally to the side of the road half a league ahead. He barely made out the shape of it in the shadows of a late summer sunset. Cyrus readjusted his pack on his shoulders and touched his companion lightly.

" _Will your footpaws make it?"_

Nova nodded once, clutching the shawl about her ears when another sudden wind tried to tug the ends away.

The path was a little forsaken, with weeds tucking up here and there and a solid crust that had gone unbroken by other paws for some time. Regardless it was an old, old path, and had to lead somewhere. The mice traveled in silence. The ruin they found had been burned some ages ago, but creatures through the years had shored up earth and rubble to reform some sort of shelter against the elements.

Nova's footpaws had given out halfway. She sat heavily in the track and touched her brow to her knees. Cyrus had picked her up wordlessly, giving one small squeeze and hardly missing a step. She burned with fever. When they reached the church he laid her gently, half asleep, in a shelter made of a half-burnt pew and a pile of moldering stone. He struck up a fire, unwrapped his cloak and squatted upon it, and dug through his haversack. He was toasting a mushroom and half an apple when Nova's eyes snapped open across the fire. They were misty, and her breathing a little ragged, as though she was startled from some nightmare.

"Shouldn't be stayin' 'ere overnight," warned a voice from the roadside.

Cyrus watched the old hedgehog stamp into the firelight. The stranger had a broad scar across the center of his face and was missing a number of headspikes. He took the liberty of sitting on a broad stone near the fire but under the open sky and eyed the mouse's skewered dinner speculatively. Cyrus offered him a slice of mushroom and was rewarded a cold crust of bread in return. The males eyed one another warily as they bit into the shared morsels and, neither dying on the spot, Cyrus offered half his portion of bread to the silent mousemaid who had curled closely in his shadow. She reached with little grace and a heavy paw, and eventually let her shaking arm drop in the dirt.

"Strangers to Mossflo'er?"

"Aye."

Cyrus shielded the maiden from the hedgehog's wandering eye. He leaned close to her, fed her the crust of bread, and straightened to square his shoulders toward the gnarly beast.

"Well ye shouldn'a be stayin' 'ere tonight. 'Tis safer in the wood, under the trees. Out on the road, even." The hedgehog spat an apple seed into the flames.

"The lady is ill." Cyrus uncorked a flask and gulped greedily from it. The hedgehog eyed him as though asking for it, and was not rewarded.

"Spirits won't care."

There was a prickle of fear, and Cyrus held it in the pit of his stomach for a moment. The indigestion would dampen his appetite. The mouse offered the remainder of his meal to the female warming his side. She struggled to lift her head.

"May the spirits be damned."

The hedgehog stood then, spitting again in the fire and making a sign above his broken headspikes with his paw (Cyrus saw it too had been broken once, and healed poorly).

"'F that's 'ow you feel." The stranger turned to leave, having never offered a name or a purpose, and stopped when he was clear of the warmth of the blaze and half obscured in the night. "If the lady suffers too poorly… hmmph."

He hesitated in the flickering half-light.

"'Ere's a redstone abbey up the path, name of Redwall. Healer mice in there. Do not go unless you are desperate."

With that the hedgehog was lost to the night, leaving the mice to the wayward spirits of the fallen church.

Cyrus woke some hours later in a haze. The fire had banked, but a blue smoke twisted in tendrils about their sleeping places. He thought idly about the spirits their nameless visitor had warned them about. Digesting the fear, he stepped over Nova's body and through the rubble. The smoke entwined his footpaws, pulling him first toward what he assumed to be the ruin of the altar then luring him in the direction of the sacristy. He glanced briefly past the mouldering wall and into the still forest. Seeing fog coiling through the undergrowth settled his heart enough to press on.

He wasn't aware of shifting the piles of rubble until he dropped a stone on his footpaw. Cursing softly, Cyrus crouched to rub the sting out of his limb and survey the damage. Nothing serious, not even a scrape. A twist of new cord caught his attention and with no particular feeling of interest the mouse grabbed it, twined it about his paw, and returned to the fire.

"Come far."

The voice startled him from sleep. The fire was burning cheerily again. The figure by the fire- he once thought it a mole, and then a shrew, but it changed shapes with the flicker of flames and absorbed their light like a cloak of black velvet- twisted toward him. Cyrus reached out sightlessly for his companion and found her chilled now and stiff, but breathing readily enough. The mouse was armed, and to a living creature he'd consider himself a match, but the writhing darkness across his fire commanded his submission.

"Come far," the voice repeated. It wasn't threatening, or particularly deep, or even ghoulish. It seemed so absent of character entirely that Cyrus wondered if he was hearing it at all.

"Aye."

The spirit flickered. It reappeared before his face, and still he recognized no shape of it and no quality but the darkness and the dank smell of something truly ancient.

"Brave."

Cyrus only grunted. The fear tightening in his throat prevented anything more, and the smell of damp earth, wet ash, and death itself was burning his nose. The spirit seemed to look past him, to Nova, but here Cyrus found the strength to stand before it.

" _Return to your realm."_

The mouse spat the words in his native tongue, unable to manage the sharp consonants of the common one in his terror. He didn't move to draw his weapon, but shielded the maiden with his body and stared into the oily depths of the wraith. It slid backward, diminutive now in stature.

"Not strong," it insisted. "Not foe."

" _The dead can be the enemy of nobeast,"_ Cyrus replied evenly.

If the spirit had a head it would have cocked it at him, and if it had any whiff of a personality it might have chuckled, and Cyrus knew these things because it reached out suddenly and prodded his heart and vanished, leaving images in its wake.

A sword.

A mouse.

A rose.

The cord, still wrapped about his wrist, tightened once like a snake and loosened. The mouse sank slowly into a crouch. Then plopped onto his cloak. Nova gave a shuddering sigh beside him but did not stir. The images burned his eyelids, and the ghost of the paw that had caressed his heart chilled him to the core.

Waking the next morning brought an ache to his body he hadn't felt since the earliest of the war years. He remembered the images. He remembered the spirit. The cord was still entwined about his wrist and he untangled it silently and tugged at the material. A sling. A child's weapon. Figuring it an item of some import, he stowed it away in his haversack to be forgotten about until it became useful. The mouse stretched luxuriously, cracking in several places, and squinted in the early light at the ring of ashes that had been their campfire.

A cold dread told him not to look for Nova. She was an early riser. Would have gotten the fire rekindled. He should have woke to the smell of breakfast and not the lingering scent of spirit-presence.

"Nova. Now we must leave." He spoke simply in the woodland tongue, knowing she hated it. "Wake up."

The creature was pretty as a painting in the half-light of morning, with only the irregular hitching of her breath to assure him she was still among the living. The gold of her earrings caught the pale sunlight and flicked it playfully at him, and Cyrus thought with an ill temper that he'd have to take them off wherever they went if he didn't want them snatched from her shell-like ears.

He removed her jewelry, and her boots. They wouldn't do much good to her now, not that the ragged things had done much good to her before. With the temperature of the day bound to rise, he likewise delicately untangled her from her cloak and left her in layers of red and warm yellow. Her belongings went into his haversack. The contents of her haversack he sorted through with silent deliberation.

The sewing kit. The herbs. Tinctures, carefully labeled in the old script. A whetstone, some fish hooks, a stone idol. A book of psalms carefully inscribed from the sacred text of the land they left, and a tattered mass of papers he knew were of great importance but which curled his gut when he touched them.

His gut was still churning when he found the small blankets and with blurring vision he left them, along with the half-pillaged haversack, near the burned-out fire. His own pack now straining from the additions, he lifted the limp mousemaiden whose fever scorched him, and set off down the ill-used path to Redwall Abbey.

* * *

Cyrus felt as though the spirit might appear to walk alongside him, but only the trill of birdsong accompanied him on the road. For a short while, he'd followed the limping pawprints of the hedgehog who'd visited their fire the night before, but not far from the church his trail disappeared on a narrow path into the wood. Not far, the hedgehog had told him, though the bite to his tone left much to be desired.

Bone weary, ragged from fright, and wrought with nerves, Cyrus dropped his friend entirely when she came swiftly alive with a scream. It took ten minutes to ease her thrashing, another five to trickle water down her raw throat, and another ten afterward before she settled back into the restless sleep of the sick. This episode repeated itself at odd intervals, and Nova seemed to grow heavier in his arms each time, and all in all the journey that should have taken a couple hours lasted the length of the day.

Starving now, but with anxious nausea twisting his insides around, Cyrus shivered in the shadow of the redstone abbey. He'd never considered himself a coward, but after the hedgehog's warning and the visitation of the spirit, the silent structure seemed more a tomb than a place of healing. The rising of the moon washed its stones silver-grey, and not a whisper of sound drifted from over the towering walltops. He thought about Nova's stone idol, wrapped with care in oilcloth, and tugged it free of his haversack to whisper a prayer into its delicately carved ear.

Nova had, in a fashion, modeled herself after this deity in his palm. The mouse imagined her voice giving its blessing to him in the weak light. He cast a look to where she lay curled in their cloaks, just within the shadow of the nearest tree, and wished her voice would give him strength now.

"Hallo the walltop!" He had chosen to avoid the main gate. Seeing the scars of many seasons' war strengthened this decision as they had skirted the foot of the wall and around to a smaller gate on the south side. "Mice of Redwall!"

He had a strong voice that carried far, but the minutes stretched by with only his echo tittering plaintively back down to him.

"Give us sanctuary!"

Hours later, still begging the stoic stones, his voice hoarse and body shaking, Cyrus gave into his exhaustion. He crept through dew-damp brambles, dragging Nova deeper into the wood and out of sight from passing travelers. He hardly had the strength to hold her. Though feverish, she was trembling beneath the skin. Giving one final forlorn look up at the empty battlements, Cyrus wrapped the length of his body around the lady's, and let sleep take him.

He dreamt of being strangled by rambling roses.

An hour after the dawning saw the little south wallgate creak open, and a pair of mousemaidens scurried out onto the path garbed in green habits and carrying covered baskets. They seemed to be arguing, glaring at one another and hissing in hushed tones, but their faces brightened considerably when they spied young Cyrus and his ailing friend.

"Young mice, there!" Cyrus called, tugging himself free from cloak and limp body. "Please, I beg sanctuary."

They met him halfway. Lovely twin sisters by name of Bonnie and Deydre, they chittered and cooed over Nova's still form in thick accents, speaking too swiftly for him to translate in his anxiety.

"Tut tut, dear one," Deydre seemed to notice his predicament, and spoke slowly and clearly to him, looking him straight in the face. Cyrus fought her gaze, and lost. "Let her come now into the Abbey. The infirmary sisters will care for her there."

Cyrus made to lift Nova and carry her in the still-ajar gate, and was barred by Bonnie.

"You ill too then lad?" She demanded, a little scornfully, tapping a footpaw as though this delay in their herb gathering would be the death of the king's court.

"She cannot walk for herself."

"Sister Eofie and I'll be out in two shakes," Deydre chimed, leaving her basket by the roadside.

"No males in the abbey," Bonnie was still glaring at him.

A stout-built mouse matron of some years appeared in the doorway with an affirming noise, and went about gathering one half of Nova's body, while Deydre attempted to take the footpaws.

"I'll not leave her."

The three females ceased their bustling. They didn't speak, but the challenge was evident. Sister Eofie spoke sharply to the younger mice and gave him a cold but sympathizing look.

"'Tis true," she had the rough rustic accent the hedgehog had had, and he found it more comforting than the polished tones of her companions. "No male folk in 'ee Abbey, 'less they need tendin' to. You come to this gate tomorra' noon an' I'll tell yer how the sweet lassie's lookin' on. Ta now."

Bumping the younger mice aside with a wide hip she lifted Nova up in her own two arms and scuttled through the gate, trusting Deydre and Bonnie to bar his path behind her. The young lasses seemed at a loss for what to say to him now, and he to them. They picked up their baskets, continued their argument where they left off, and trundled off into the wood without another word to him.

Cyrus was left feeling cold and not a little furious. He paced outside the gate for a time. He left a long furrow in the sand of the path, and turned his fury to a nearby sycamore. He left wide, weeping gashes cut into the bark and stormed back down the path to the ruined church. His stomach moaned. The late summer sun hissed down upon his ears, and there was a faint drone from the grassland to the west where a few grasshoppers had risen early. A magpie lighted in his path. It cocked its bill at him and croaked.

" _And what prophet's blood have you?"_ Cyrus spat, drawing a small-bladed knife from his boot and flinging it with such speed that the creature's wing was clipped painfully before it could flush.

Cyrus made no haste in pursuing the bird. It winged away, lacking grace, trailing splats of blood on the dry earth and cawing uproariously. The mouse retrieved his knife from the dirt and sat heavily in the middle of the path. He had fallen behind a low rise, and turned his head so all he could see of the redstone fortress was the hulking belltower and the spires of the abbey building.

"See ye've left 'er."

The hedgehog appeared like a wisp. Cyrus flashed the knife at him irritably and said nothing. Despite his rudeness the mouse was offered a small loaf of bread, still warm, a fresh canteen of water, a bite of cheese, and a russet apple. His visitor dropped these things in his lap without making a move to sit down.

"What do they call you?"

"Few beasts 'round to call me anythin'."

Cyrus eyed the hedgehog's stiff paw, his twisted leg. The scar across his face had festered and tendrils of it spread like the sickness that ought to have killed him.

"You're pitiful."

The hedgehog cuffed him none too gently, but said nothing.

"How long will they keep her?"

At this the stranger fixed his sights on the belltower- it occurred to Cyrus that he'd never heard the bells toll- he rubbed at his knotty paw and turned to return to his home in the wood.

"If she e'en lives to see tomorra's dawnin', ye'll still ne'er see her again."

Cyrus didn't try and follow. He tore at his bread and cheese savagely. He spoke a fair tongue, for a foreigner, but couldn't find the words to interrogate the gruff creature. Worry gnawed at him too sharply. His thoughts jumbled between his mother's tongue and the Old language, quoting, to his dismay, the dirges of the goddess Ione- stolen away to her end by the Nameless One, who drowned her in the inky river of time.

The mouse rose, pinning his ears, and managed a jog southward down the wide path. His irregular step jumbled the beat of the dirge, and he picked up instead a marching song he'd sung on campaign- and another he'd heard in the taverns of Southsward, first arriving in this new land. On stumbling into the ruin of the church he immediately tossed down his haversack and dug through it for the idol of Ione.

He placed it on a flat stone, shaved tinder from a handy branch, and struck a single ember at the deity's footpaws. Ione was a goddess of storytelling, of prophecy, and of sacrifice in battle. She was customarily garbed in red silk veils, with a dagger pressed against her wrist and her mouth open in song. But Cyrus wasn't much of a stonemason, and the crude figure he now prayed to was dimly recognizable. He burnt an end of bread and touched it to the stone's lips, muttering in the old language with his eyes half-lidded.

He prayed for strength. He prayed for mercy. He prayed for the great main gates of the abbey to swing open and for Nova to stride out to meet him. He prayed for a hundred other things that the little stone goddess hadn't the power to grant him.

There was a presence at his elbow. He hadn't thought the spirit would reappear- not while he spoke to the goddess- and so, despite whatever heresy might become of it he ended his worship with a ring of steel.

"Easy does it lad."

There was a lightness to the voice despite the scowl on the strange mouse's face. Cyrus didn't waver, but kept his swordpoint at dangerous proximity to the creature's gut. The image of the mouse seemed to waver in the dusk, and Cyrus wondered if it wasn't the spirit after all. The moon was fuller tonight, perhaps the apparition had more strength.

"Where's yore lady friend then?"

"I haven't one," Cyrus lied.

"Saw you, last night, takin' shelter here at St. Ninian's."

"She's in the Abbey."

The mouse shook his head sadly.

"Does nobeast in the whole of Mossflower have a name?"

The stranger eyed the stone idol with suspicion. He didn't sign himself, as the hedgehog had done, but the look of wariness wasn't lost on Cyrus. These creatures of Mossflower practiced varied religions, few of which knew living gods, fewer of which practiced any form of idolatry.

"Folks 'ese days are leery of passing strangers, mind."

Night was falling heavily on the pair. The single smoking ember at Cyrus's makeshift altar had smothered. He felt a single twinge of fear, like a brief spurt of nausea, and allowed the feeling to deepen his scowl.

"Ought to do about yore sweet lassie."

If these strange beasts continued poking their snouts in his business, Cyrus thought darkly, he was bound to thrash one of them.

"Unless you're brave."

There was a cold prickle in his heart, not unfamiliar to him.

"'Tis a shame, what's 'appened to old Redwall."

The cold was spreading, like the sorrow on the spirit's face. It was close to him now, closer than before? He couldn't quite remember. Cyrus strode through it abruptly, shattering it in cold mist, and gathered Nova's idol in his paws. He called over his shoulder as he left the haunted ruin,

" _Keep your wicked claws away from me."_ And tried to settle his heart.


	2. Chapter 2

Cyrus met Sister Eofe nose to nose the next afternoon, in the doorway of the southern wallgate. Had it been either of her two young charges, perhaps he might have passed. But Sister Eofe had worn the habit for many and many a season, and had never allowed a healthy male within the gates.

"Your dear one is ailing terrible, 'tis true," Eofe hummed, idly flicking pastry from beneath her claws, not caring that Cyrus's whiskers were brushing her own. "'Er fever don't come down soon, ye won't be 'earing her pretty voice again, 'at's for certain."

The comment struck Cyrus, but he didn't back away from the mouse matron that smelled of blackberry tart and infirmary salves.

"Such a pretty thin' too, wi' a pretty name. Ione, is et?"

That cold feeling came back to his heart. He could feel its beating in his ears and down to the tip of his tail.

"I will see her now."

He almost didn't hear her denial over the rushing in his ears. Another mouse was peering through the gates and he glared first at it and then at Eofe. His chest tightened. He fought to breathe.

He'd carry the scar that took him through that little gate for the rest of his life. Couldn't imagine it himself, looking back, how it must have looked to those gathered at the Abbey door when he drew his short sword with a gleam and rent his flesh from hip to shoulder.

"I will be going in now, you miserable wench," Cyrus seethed, sheathing the bloodied weapon with a _schlick_ and staggering his full weight into Eofe's chest.

She let him pass, unimpressed, and followed him as he staggered through the cold stone walls to meet his fate. While they walked she snatched deftly at his belt and buckles, and away came his scabbard. Unsurprised, Cyrus carried on. It was common practice to disarm a beast before taking him to the infirmary. It was not, however, common practice for wounded males to let themselves in to Redwall Abbey.

Mice gaped at him. Dozens of them. Only mice, only females, some garbed in the green of novices and some in the rich brown of elders. He left a heavy trail of blood. It ran down his stomach and thighs, caking in his fur. His torn jerkin caught the idle summer breeze, and a handful of maidens drew back in shock as Eofe directed him toward the infirmary with an air of businesslike agitation.

"Pearlee, accompany this savage creature the remainder of his journey to the infirmary," Eofe sniffed.

A broad faced, pretty thing bobbed her head at the order and took a firm grip on Cyrus's shoulder. He couldn't help the smallest of smirks as the elder mouse strode away grumbling about the blood soiling her habit. Cyrus watched his footpaws carefully as the sting of his shallow wound began to overcome him. Pearlee's grip softened when they ducked into the warm redstone building that housed the abbey infirmary. She guided him up the stairs wordlessly, probing paws pushing him into the wall when he found he lacked the balance to move on his own- though he found she touched him only as necessary.

The infirmary was empty. Pearlee's face looked as shocked as his did, but for different reasons as she shoved him onto a cot and puzzled over the herbs and tinctures along the length of the far wall. The wounded mouse glared savagely at her back as he unfastened his ruined jerkin and tugged off his grubby undershirt. The maiden nearly dropped her medicines when she turned to find her patient half-naked and blushed bright red to the tips of her ears.

"Season's grace!"

"Cease your blaspheming and tell me where she is," Cyrus snarled, throwing his bloodied clothes in a heap at her footpaws.

The young abbeydweller shook her head mutely. He felt his blood quicken, and when his stilted steps took him within inches of the maiden's puzzled pretty face he struggled to keep his fisted paws at his sides.

"The girl." He saw his reflection in honey-colored eyes. "The ailing mouse from yesterday. Dark of fur, pretty as the dawning, _Nova!"_

"I will thank you, my son, to step away from the young novice."

"Abbess Maria!"

"Pearlee, carry on with your chores."

Pearlee scuttled around him and through the door at such a speed she nearly bowled him over. It took more energy than Cyrus thought it worth to stump around to face the black-robed apparition in the doorway. She was ageless- a hundred if she was a season- with a lifetime of grace to bear up her straight shoulders and delicate jaw. The Mother Abbess of Redwall swept a paw out from her wide habit sleeves and gestured to the bed he'd abandoned. Cyrus found himself limping to it not of his own accord, never taking his eyes from those of Abbess Maria. He sat. Maria seemed to glide from the door to the infirmary desk, and back to him, where unperturbed by his nakedness she doctored the shallow furrow in his flesh.

"You're costing me a great deal in bandages, young mouse."

There might have been humor somewhere in her dark eyes, but Cyrus refused to look for it. He winced against the forceful paws. The Mother Abbess was stronger than her dainty frame ought allow. A paw made distinct by age and years of work- but not old or gnarled, not damaged like his mother's had been- traced the ink of a tattoo across one shoulder, accompanied with a disapproving hum.

"Such vanity in a young creature."

"Where is Nova?"

The Abbess worked her way about the room as though on inspection. The coldness that had prickled and caressed Cyrus's heart many times in the last two days was with him now, and he fought to keep from glancing about the shadows to see if the spirit had followed him here. Lured him here, no doubt, by the way Maria studied him. As though he were a specimen in a glass jar.

"I know nobeast named Nova."

"You took her in yesterday morn."

The Abbess humphed, a little noise quite undignified for her position.

"The maiden insists... You understand, I must protect the privacy of my patients." The coldness was growing in him like a rage. "Especially from wanton young males like yourself, willing to maim your own flesh to get to hers."

Cyrus fought the cold presence like he fought his own anger, and his own fear, like he fought the commanding gaze of the abbess that held him motionless on the cot while she dusted idly at the desk.

"She was wearing a crimson dress, ragged from the road." The Abbess hummed, unimpressed. "With a shawl the color of-of… it was yellow. A yellow shawl that she liked to wrap about her ears. Ears that have two holes in one and three in the other, where I'd taken her earrings out before starting down the path from the ruined church. She has a broad scar around one ankle."

Maria allowed him to pant a moment.

"She doesn't speak the woodland language well. You ask for her name, and in her delirium she calls Ione. It is a holy name in our lands. Her name is Nova."

The stone eyes of the abbess seemed to flicker. She bade him rise, which he did on stiff paws. There was a strain in his chest from the tight wrappings. Abbess Maria swept toward the door at a leisurely pace that allowed him to stump along in tow. He studied, now, the warm red hallways of the abbey, hewn so carefully he could hardly see the cracks between each stone. Here and again there were small tapestries- other mice that came before the Abbess Maria- or perhaps Abbess Maria taking up various other forms of life.

"She was quite distressed in the infirmary. We moved her to a private dormitory this morning."

The Abbess opened a door to her left with a small creak, and ushered him inside. Their presence was met with a shrill scream.

Nova was worse off than he expected.

They'd tied her to the bed, and her wrists bled from the force of her convulsions. Bright, unseeing eyes the color of brandy flashed, and so did gnashing pearly teeth. Cyrus approached the bedside and put a firm paw just below the curve of Nova's breast.

"Nova." He spoke firmly, in the old tongue. " _May the spirit of distress release you. Unbind you from this prison, Nova. Quiet. Peace."_ The female's thrashing grew slower, her eyes fixing on his own. He felt the stare of the Abbess, heard the shifting of robes, and held up his free paw. " _Nova, of the House of Sceren Bataar, I command this of you: Lay back to rest. You are in the protection of your humblest servant. You are safe."_

The maiden spoke to him in a low voice made hoarse from thirst, in the same tongue, and the abbess watched Cyrus stiffen and his ears flatten. But he continued speaking calmly. Slowly the fevered eyes shut.

The abbess, at once a young maid and an ancient hag, drew his attention after Nova's breathing evened out.

"Eventide is drawing near. You've seen the child. Now you must be leaving this place."

"I will not."

"It is not permitted for-"

" _May the gods damn whatever is permitted in this place!"_

The abbess flared her nostrils at his outburst. "And how immodest might it be, an unwed male in the presence of these scores of maidens overnight?"

Cyrus turned away from the black-robed abbess and placed a paw on Nova's brow, trailing it down her cheek. It was the sleeping sickness, surely. She'd not be well for weeks- perhaps not before the bite of autumn fell on Mossflower. And having delivered her to the care of these creatures…

"Have you the rights to wed?" Cyrus asked without taking his eyes from dark lashes on silky cheeks, a broad scar across the bridge of her nose that seemed to be drawn there more than carved.

Abbess Maria spluttered at him a moment, mouth agape, gracious at least that the young creature wasn't turned watch her gawp like a fish. "I do at that."

"The daughters of the House of Sceren must be wed on the night of a full moon. Outside, in full grace of the Lost Kings." He met Maria's eyes now, nerves steely even in the face of her ageless mystery. "They must drink of a sacred tonic- as a servant of that house I know the recipe. You needn't worry about us soiling your pristine dormitories or the innocence of your novices for the marriage is not to be consummated until the night of the new moon." He looked again at the sleeping mouse, now wracked with chills. "We ought to be gone by then at any rate."

"You intend to be married to a beast who hasn't even the strength to lift her head?" Maria scolded. "To drag her into the chill night air? Shame on you, you young fool!"

At this, Cyrus nearly smiled. "Mother Abbess, if the potion that I return with does not lift Nova onto her very footpaws, I will cease my fighting and leave her to your eternal care."

"At any rate it will not be done," Maria scoffed, barring his way. At his glare, she splayed both paws. "There are laws in this abbey. Rules. Meant to preserve the sanctity of Spirit. From dusk until dawn nobeast speaks. Nobeast leaves their rooms." She was nose to nose with him now. "It is to observe the Night of Truth, as holy a rite as your barbarous wedding traditions."

"Then I will remove her of this abbey."

"I forbid it! I will not relinquish this patient from my care!"

"Then the patient will remain in your care and you will perform the wedding outside the walls," Cyrus bullied his way past the wicked old mouse, and turned sneering from the door. "I will return tomorrow. Three hours before dusk. If you yourself do not meet me at the gate, I will make a ruin of them with my own two paws and slay everybeast that stands between me and the Lady Sceren."

At the abbess's fury he drew his bootknife and brandished it at her, feeling the cold sink into his heart and spread rapidly through his limbs.

"I am Cyrus, bathed in the blood of Lars my Father and tempered in the flames of my nation's funeral pyre. This oath will not be broken."


	3. Chapter 3

The sun was beginning to set when the abbess all but had him tossed out the abbey gates with his cleaned sword lobbed out behind him. He wasn't looking forward to another night in the quiet churchyard, but he'd stowed his valuables in the rubble- among them Nova's herb satchel. Cyrus measured his stride carefully. Too fast, and his minor wound would pull and bleed, and too slow and his own heart would threaten to trip him up with fear. His would be a long night. The potion, he could manage. The rarer ingredients were carefully indexed in the lady's satchel- for the sake of their more obscure uses, or in dire straits for their trade value. And this Mossflower Wood, Cyrus took a deep breath of the summer night air, would surely yield the rest. The wedding garments were another matter.

The mouse became aware of a lantern bobbing silently through the dark trees, at pace with him. He was in no shape for an open battle, and less so for an ambush.

"You again."

It wasn't a question. Cyrus wasn't terribly surprised when the gnarled hedgehog who'd haunted his previous nights stepped out of the brush and onto the thin path.

"'Tis dangerous to go about alone at night," the old creature scolded. "Especially on t' path."

Cyrus ignored the warning, taking stock of the hedgehog's clothes. Old, but well-made and well-kept.

"Have you a wife?"

The hedgehog spat, and continued walking. He had that old limp that had never quite adjusted, and the other poorly healed injuries but beyond that there seemed something Other about the way he carried himself. His eyes, glinting in the lantern light, stared straight ahead and straight ahead only.

"I am in need of…" Cyrus fought for the word. _Seamstress. Tailor._ "Clothes. I need clothes fashioned. By tomorrow's dusk."

"Oh, aye."

The ruins were peeking into view. A fire was burning already, but nobeast crouched around it. The nightjars within an arrow's flight of this place were silent, but fluttered their wings from their ground-nests or from their low perches, as though pinioned there.

"Thela's who ye need," the hedgehog finally told him. He held the lantern high near Cyrus's head, studying the scars of his face. "Tho' t'will do ye no good to speak to 'er alone. Speak's only the tongue of Vulpuz. Mite cross she is too, wi' outsiders an' mice and the like."

The older beast finally stopped, and a sad look crossed his eye. Cyrus halted with him, though his heart tried tugging him along deeper in the night.

"Don't go back to the church." He sounded almost pleading. "Do not go back to the abbey. T'was once a place of peace and 'appiness. But the old days have gone the way of the seasons. Evil spirits stalk those halls. There are 'orrors…"

The hedgehog shivered, and for the first time Cyrus noticed the scars of several deep lashes down the burly male's left shoulder. He seemed a hollow thing of flesh stitched together by those many scars.

"Tell me where to find the vixen."

Without waiting for a reply, wishing he hadn't watched the hedgehog's face fall, Cyrus stamped from the lantern light into darkness and then into the pale light of the campfire in the ruin of the church. His companion stayed at the edge of the glow, so that the lights from his lantern and from the fire swung together. Cyrus watched him from the corner of his eye and shivered. The mystery fire offered him no warmth.

"I'll take ye to her. Gather yore things."

As he was led away through the wood, Cyrus glanced back at the fire. The spirit-mouse looked back at him, black against the flame.

The path they took through the forest was narrow. It was well worn, though, and easy enough to maneuver even in the queasy swinging lantern light. Cyrus kept close to the hedgehog- who had still not given his name- and kept his ears pricked, constantly twisting at the night-sounds of Mossflower Wood.

By and by they approached a small house built against the monstrous trunk of a beech tree. The leaves of the ancient tree shivered in the slight breeze, dappling the ground and the roof of the house below with pearls of moonlight. The cottage itself was squat, with carefully made wooden shingles and lovely round windows of thick, warped glass that winked merrily with firelight. Cyrus could see a figure slouched before the hearth- larger than a mouse, but not bulky like a hedgehog. The creature cocked its head as they entered the yard, as though listening for them, but did not stray from the hearthfire.

"Billux, ye've come 'ome 'arly."

"Aye, Kinnock. I've need of ye."

The beast, Kinnock, that sat by the fire, stood to welcome them, but turned only halfway to the door and cocked his head. He was an otter, older than the hedgehog so that he was completely silver about the muzzle. Billux, the hedgehog, ushered Cyrus gently in the door and nudged him in the direction of a plush chair with lace doilies protecting the arms.

"Who's this little beast?" Kinnock wasn't looking at him. Most likely because he couldn't. The blind eyes passed over Cyrus once or twice in a bland pass about the room.

"Friend," Billux gruffed, wrapping a light cape about the otter's tall shoulders. A look of intimacy passed between them as the hedgehog clasped the cape at Kinnock's left shoulder, and Cyrus looked away. "Needs to speak to Thela, the vixen. And needs to do et tonight."

"Grubby old witch," Kinnock murmured, though not without a look of fondness. He turned his head in Cyrus's general direction, flaring his nostrils, seeking him. "Wot's yore name, friend? I s'pect this old rogue never bothered t' ask."

"Cyrus," the mouse responded, bobbing his head at the odd pair. "New to this country."

"Well 'tis a pleasure."

Cyrus avoided Kinnock's blank stare and hummed his agreeance as he watched Billux bustle through the pantry, gathering loaves of bread and wedges of cheese. The old hedgehog gathered enough vittles to feed a platoon into a rough-woven sack. He bumped now and again into pots and pans hung from wallhooks, and scuffled through the gap between a battered table that looked seldom used, and a counter gleaming with jars of preserved fruit. There seemed to be no end to the clutter in the tiny home, and the blind otter sharing the parlor with him ticked his ears in amusement at every small bump and curse that came from the kitchen.

"Sounds like we're stocked well enough," Kinnock hummed after awhile, just above a private tone. The hedgehog muttered something mutinous from the kitchen, that sounded suspiciously like:

"Bitch dog an' her fees, 'twill be a wonder if she won't take the whole house in payment."

"What does the little fella even need of the fox, luv?"

"A white dress, trimmed in gold," Cyrus answered the otter. "In the particular style of my home, and with gold sewn in the hem of the sleeves. And a veil the color of saffron, trimmed in gold."

His eye was turned inward now, thinking of his mother, shrouded in her wedding gown on the day of her funeral. The tumeric and red clay painted down the planes of her face in prayer. He hadn't time for the intricate beadwork that ought to line the hems, or the gold and red embroidery detailing the abduction of Ione. Nova's wedding dress would be plain- unlike those of her dear relatives but much like that of her matron deity.

He was being ushered out the door before he quite knew it, and though he was grateful for the haste in accomplishing his mission he wondered if Billux ever sat down for tea.

Cyrus walked behind the older pair by several paces, his heart thrumming. He hadn't given any thought as to what he was doing until now. They were far, far from home for him to be worried about the consequences of his actions- and the house of Sceren all long murdered in their halls- but the rebel in him felt a pang of exhilaration, and the patriot a pit of shame.

"She is no noble anymore, Cy," the mouse muttered to himself. _But she is still a holy creature, and you a mercenary._ Perhaps the gods would forgive this one, of his many transgressions.

Kinnock kept a paw lightly on Billux's arm, conversing with him in low tones. The hedgehog glanced back at Cyrus and urged him to keep up, just as a faint glow lit the undergrowth.

"Erk!" Billux faltered, shivering, but the otter caught him solidly. "Glow worms. 'Armless, but don't follow 'em. We're comin' through the swamp now."

Cyrus watched the light shimmer and fade, and reappear some distance away. He wondered what uncertain doom the hedgehog was warning him away from, and decided not to tempt the workings of the Fates.

They walked for some time in quiet before reaching a den cut into a hillock. Torches were burning to either end of the covered entryway. Kinnock stepped so closely to them they must have singed his whiskers.

"Thela!" Cried the otter, who continued in a sinuous tongue. "Thela!" He cried again, three times.

The door to the den was a woven mat of reeds and feathers, with scraps of hide tucked in from some unfortunate beasts which Cyrus did not want to consider. This rug of sorts swung open, and little light spilled out with the oily vixen that answered Kinnock's call. Billux joined Cyrus's side as the otter and the fox conversed lowly in the language of the god of foxes and of Hellgates.

"They'll be barterin' her fees first," the hedgehog explained, eyeing the vixen with no little amount of suspicion.

He stiffened suddenly, and Cyrus himself felt his hackles prickle. Golden eyes were gleaming at him in the torchlight. Kinnock looked a touch queasy, cocking his head this way and that. The vixen spoke to him through the side of her mouth and stepped away from him, a half step closer to the darkness and to Cyrus.

"I tol' her wot you were needin'," Kinnock started uncertainly, and let his shoulders pop in a shrug.

"What is it, vixen?" Cyrus steeled himself against that golden gaze, wondering if his hide would join the others hanging from her doorway.

" _Son of Mars."_ The vixen spoke the gods' tongue!

" _You are mistaken,"_ Cyrus returned, pinning his ears. " _How come you to know the name of the god of my mother?"_

" _Servant, I. To temple of Mars, seasons gone."_

She spoke with the cadence of a devotee, and knew little of the language outside of the sacred rites and prayers. Cyrus struggled to recognize her marred old face. But he had spent little time in the temples in his childhood, at the time this vixen no doubt served her devotions. Thela's gaze misted and the mouse could all but feel the probing of her dark magicks. The vixen returned to the plane of the living with a hiss, snapped something to Kinnock in the language of foxes, and disappeared into her den without another word.

"She won't help you." The otter's voice sounded thin, a mite cold, as though his trust in the mouse had vanished.

"By damn she will," Billux huffed, "she took my best bottle o' damson wine!"

"By damn she will," Cyrus repeated, shouldering his way into the den before either of his hosts could slow him down.

The foxes'- three pairs of eyes snapped up to him- den was cramped but warm. Rugs of all patterns stretched out and overlaid one another on the floor in so many layers, and tapestries and feathers and strung beads hung from support beams and nailed to walls. Herbs hung haphazardly among them, and smoke rose from a number of incense burners sitting upon steps carved in one wall. Thela's kits rushed him, snapping at his extremities so that he had to bop their wet noses with tight fists until their mother's screeching called them down from their attack. The hedgehog and the otter peeped cautiously around the door covering, but did not enter the den.

"Mouse. Leave." Thela's tone was clipped, her eyes sharp, one paw grasping each of her children. "No trade."

" _You are under the obligations of the House of Sceren,"_ Cyrus countered boldly, meeting the vixen eye for eye. " _You owe this debt to Sceren Bataar."_

Thela scoffed at him, smiling. He didn't back down. The scoff turned to a giggle. And then to a cackle. " _Holiest of all are the Sons of Mars,"_ she quoted in her sing-song cadence. " _But nothing, nothing, nothing are the dead- for they have taken the voyage of weeping stars- their souls in the paws of Lars, their father in Death."_

She knew they were dead. How far had word travelled? And how fast, over the broad lands of the continent and across the wide ocean, to this anonymous hillock. Thela's children were getting impatient. The little female whined at her in their native speech, and both were given a thwap about the ears and sent to a dark corner of the den for sleep. There was a gleam in Thela's eye now.

"How much?" She struck out a paw. "How much pay?"

" _You refused."_

" _In the land there are evil spirits, and the spirits possess the land- and the spirits possessing the land have touched the Sons of Mars."_

Here, Thela paused, twisting her nose about. Her memory was quite good- she had the cadence and the proper pronunciation. All she knew, however, was scripture and lore and what she could manipulate of two.

"No scare, spirit. Work spirit, work living." She held up her paws, as though the spirits and the living creatures were nearly equal to work with and for. "Both money, good money. Only… right money."

He thought about the spirit in the ruins of the church. The mouse spirit that seemed to possess him at odd hours. He thought about the dreams he'd had in the shadows of the abbey walls, of being strangled by a climbing rose. The vixen was warning him that he was spirit-touched. But he'd never known a fox to turn down a profit.

They were quiet long enough for a whuffling snore to rise up from the dark corner. Cyrus glanced toward the door and saw that Billux had grown bored of the patchwork conversation, though Kinnock still was head and shoulders through the doorway. Cyrus thrust a paw into the inner pockets of his jerkin and came out with a gold chain, studded here and again with diamonds that glimmered in the banking light of Thela's hearth fire. He smacked a sooty paw away before Thela could snatch the jewelry away.

" _You will make for me a wedding gown befitting a daughter of Sceren- a daughter of Ione herself, and with it a veil of the same blood red as the cloak of Lars. You will make me a tunic. And a cloak, of the sort of the cloak of Lars. Trimmed in gold."_ The fox waited impatiently. " _And you will tell me about the spirits of this land."_

He dropped his mother's last gold necklace into the waiting paws.

* * *

Billux and Kinnock were not allowed to remain in the vixen's doorway. Cyrus joined them for a moment outside, and helped them pitch a rough-hewn tent that the hedgehog had thought to bring along. He tucked his valuables, few though they were, among his new friends' supplies, and left them in the dark.

Entering Thela's home, Cyrus found the vixen had been busy in his brief absence. The sleeping pups were blocked from view by a thick black curtain, and the hearthfire flickered a strange green at odd intervals. The scents about the place had changed too- Thela lit musky, heavy smelling incenses and now and again tossed pawfuls of herbs into a small dish of glowing embers. He'd paused in the door to take all this in, and the fox made a small noise of annoyance as she watched him.

"Do not think of quoting the Virtues to me," the mouse snorted. He felt eerily light-headed, and wished for a moment they could have left the door uncovered.

When he sat, Thela caught sight of the dingy bandage peeking out of his collar. She tapped it lightly, tracing down the clean rip in his shirt that he'd hastily fastened closed with thorns.

"Hurt much?"

"No." He gritted his teeth when a claw pressed through the bandage into the scabby wound.

"Hmmph."

Cyrus watched as the vixen crushed a small amount of nightshade with a touch of mushrooms, and an odd berry he'd seen once or twice among traders. She did this plainly and without flourish. She wanted him to know how she was poisoning him. Then gathering these together with a drop or two of nectar and a dash of brandy, presented it to him in a glass that was roughly blown and full of air pockets.

"Wait," she instructed, peeking back to the corner of her home to ensure her children were still sleeping.

She dropped another pawful of herbs in the dish of embers, lifted the glowing dish, and blew the smoke in his eyes.

"Now."

'

He downed the tincture in a swift gulp. Choked. Another puff of smoke burned his eyes, and they watered and his vision blurred so he could only see the eyes of the vixen reflecting the soft glow.

"Spirits of this land," the vixen hissed then spoke in the fox language, speaking through his body and into the world within him. She continued, line by line, to weave the spell in her own language and to translate it roughly into his. "Into your hands, a son of Lars. Test this mortal soul, spill secrets like blood."

He heard the rest only dimly. She must have run out of words in his language, or he had lost all sense, for she kept speaking and humming and singing before him but he understood nothing but the sickle claw tug-tugging at his heart. There was a whisper rising like vomit from his gut.

"The church," he struggled with the syllables.

St. Ninian's.

"The abbey."

Redwall.

"The sword!"

When he awoke he felt no pain. At the end of a long hall was a tapestry of a mouse, not unlike himself, in full armor. The figure's arms were crossed and he was frowning. Cyrus moved along the long hollow hall, but never neared the picture. A paw fell on his shoulder and burned where it touched.

"Mother."

It was not his mother. It wasn't not his mother. He did not look at her, but stood there with his shoulder burning and his footpaws rooted.

"Blessed Mother," there was a shimmer of scarlet and he daren't look at it. "Mother who is it, that beast that challenges me?"

"Redwall." Came the voice of the spirit at St. Ninian's. It stood between him and the picture now, unformed, a shape that suggested something that once was alive. "Champion."

There was meaning in those two words. A black paw reached out to scatter the spirit, but Cyrus grabbed its wrist and felt his fur singe. Ione didn't speak. He wasn't sure if she was supposed to, wasn't sure if her tongue had been returned to her, or-

"Mother, I was never told this story," he sounded like a child.

A face appeared in the spirit's shadow.

"Redwall. Champion," more urgently now. "Redwall. Champio-"

The spirit shattered in the wake of a gleaming black blade, and the mouse from the tapestry lifted his weapon to tickle Cyrus's heart.

"Mother, give me sanctuary."

The dream fell apart. Thela looked exhausted. The pups were whining behind the curtain. The fire in the hearth had burned out and they were left in the dim glow of embers and candlelight. Thela had a look of residual fear on her muzzle as she cleaned up the trinkets of her sorcery. Cyrus felt his throat scratching, as if he'd been screaming, and wondered briefly if he had and what he had said. Wondered what Thela saw.

"Tomorrow." The vixen pushed him to the door. "Tomorrow, dress."

She didn't speak again or make eye contact before shoving him out and into the fresh air. Kinnock and Billux were fretting their collars, staring out the flap of their tent for his return. Cyrus stumped over to them dumbly. He felt sick, and at once rejuvenated.

"I will take my things." The words sounded hollow, and were hard to form. His tongue wanted to curl after speaking them. "Thank you. Truly. We will meet again."

Without another word he regathered his gear and stumbled blindly into the night.

Cyrus spoke to his mother while he walked. His birth mother, not the one that he served. She floated in his mind's eye so vividly he worried at once that her bones had been disturbed. Leaning one shoulder against a creaking sycamore, he slurred through a prayer for peace. The words felt hollow and empty on his tongue. In the wake of the goddess's light, everything felt hollow.

He had touched the physical form of a god.

The priests in his own land would have burned him alive for such an indiscretion.

In a mild sweat, his whiskers sagging, he slurred through another prayer- for strength- and another, for impunity. He was still fighting through the haze of the trance the vixen had put him under, telling his mother about the visitation of the goddess, when a sudden glow spirited through the trees. Cyrus paused. Billux's warning of glow worms and swamps echoed vaguely in his mother's voice. Slowly on then. The forest was eerie in the darkness. There was a cadence of insects somewhere off to his left, and the soft hoot of an owl that he'd rather not meet. He felt anxious, and hummed to himself a hymn he'd learned in early childhood, while listing to himself the herbs he'd be able to gather in the early hours of dawn.

Mandrake root.

Hawthorn berries.

Betony.

His stomach turned suddenly. He saw colors he didn't know how to name swirling with his vomit inches from his nose. He had a night like this on campaign, drunk on absinthe and trailing piss and blood from a ravaged enemy camp back to his own. He'd had companions then to stumble along beside him. Friends who had long since been killed in the rebellions or disappeared, like him, into anonymity. Alone now in the dark wood, Cyrus wondered what strange lands they'd gone to.

The moon overhead was bright. His stomach settled slowly, and he stumbled to his footpaws and lurched forward, his list of ingredients buzzing somewhere behind his thoughts.


	4. Chapter 4

The mouse that came to the abbey gates precisely three hours before the evening prayers looked nothing like the creature she'd escorted out the evening before.

"Pearlee, fetch the mother abbess," Eofe commanded.

He was staring up at her with such intensity she could almost make out the scars on his face. He said nothing to her, nor she to him, but rested his paw on the pommel of the short sword at his hip. He wore a mismatched set of armor- only a few pieces really- that shone in the evening sun and nearly blinded the sister. Abbess Maria joined her within moments, and the younger novice stood huffing at the top of the stair. There was a sneer on the abbess's face.

"The young savage has returned," Maria sniffed, wiping a pair of crystal spectacles in the broad sleeve of her habit.

"As 'e swore to," Eofe reminded her, crossing broad arms over a broader chest.

"Open the gates. We'll see if he can truly wake the dead."

Eofe made a sharp gesture, and a team of novices strained to open the ancient gates. She followed the abbess down from the wall at a leisurely pace, tutting to Pearlee as she passed. When they lighted on the lawn, paces away from the armored warrior, the sister felt a twinge of unease. Stories had been written time and again of enemies of the Order- verminous warlords with hordes numbering thousands- but these were ancient history. Such folklore was generally discouraged amongst Abbeydwellers now. Many of the stories had been rewritten, lost, forgotten. Nowhere in the scope and breadth of her sisters' knowledge or ability was the power to wage war, even against one small mouse.

Cyrus looked like some barbarian god. The armor buckled over his left shoulder and the greaves that twined down the length of his arms shone a burnished bronze, and his ivory tunic was unmarred from the dust of his journey. Even his scabbard was polished and new-looking, its tip disappearing in the length of his blood-colored cloak.

There was a gathering of sisters now, all curious of the fearsome stranger. Cyrus allowed his dark eyes to roam over those assembled- from elder to the youngest novice, and he raised his left paw.

"I am Cyrus," his voice was thunderous. "I was born the son of a slave. I was raised in the marble halls of a noble. I was freed by war, and in war and blood I was tempered." He stared directly at Abbess Maria, his paw held firmly aloft. "I am Cyrus, a Son of Lars and of the Blessed Mother Ione, and I seek the paw of the only Daughter of the House of Sceren."

A hush followed his declaration, broken by a number of murmurs from the maidens scattered in the lawn. A hundred eyes looked to the Abbess. The leader of Redwall measured her silence by the tension darkening Cyrus's brow.

"Fetch her then," Maria commanded in a stony voice.

"Wait." Cyrus closed the gap between himself and the abbess and laid a carefully wrapped parcel at her footpaws. "She must wear these."

Abbess Maria nodded stiffly, and the nearest four novices scurried for the dormitories.

"What will you do when you find her dying?"

Maria's voice was poison in the still air between them. Eofe watched the warrior's face. Nothing crossed it. His whiskers twitched against a sudden stirring breeze, and he presented a vial he pulled from the neck of his tunic. He swirled it, almost idly, where Eofe and the abbess and those nearest them could see.

"I promised you, Abbess," Cyrus hummed. "One sip."

There was a tense silence between them after. Mice of the Order grew bored in it, but nobeast was quite willing to leave. Shifting paws and whispers of chatter lent a busy static to the assembly. Only Cyrus and Maria remained unmoving as even Eofe's footpaws began to ache and fall asleep. After ages of awkward milling, the four mice returned bearing up a stretcher.

Eofe, not being a particularly gifted healer, had spent little time at the sick one's bedside in the last days. When her sisters stepped away from the pale, still body, she felt a sickness of her own creeping up like bile in her throat. She was still breathing, at least. That was all the Redwaller could say for the frail thing. Shrouded in a crimson veil, the foreigner looked ready for the grave. Eofe glanced at her abbess. The ancient mouse said nothing. Her face gave nothing of her thoughts away.

The silence became absolute at Cyrus approached the stretcher. He prostrated himself before the body and murmured what sounded like a prayer in his odd, sinuous language. Still murmuring, he lifted the blood-colored veil and bent to touch his forehead to his bride's, and remaining there with his eyes closed he uncorked the vial and dribbled sinister liquid between Nova's parted, gasping lips.

Minutes passed.

Nova's breathing slowed.

Cyrus lifted his head away from hers and stared, an expression of grief and disbelief coming over him like a pall. Wordlessly, he rocked back on his heels. The crowd milled anxiously. Creatures to the rear of the assembly shifted to peek over the shoulders of those in front of them. Abbess Maria's paws fell loose from her habit sleeves.

"Murderer." Eofe had never heard that tone from her abbess. "You bloody, barbaric assassin, you've murdered her."

Cyrus did not seem to hear her. He clenched and unclenched his paws in his lap. "I haven't," he whispered. "I haven't. Gods, say that I haven't."

"Don't touch her," Maria hissed as he reached out a paw. Cyrus didn't listen. "Don't _touch_ her!"

The old abbess lurched and struck the male soundly on the nose and across one eye, but Cyrus ignored the sting and lifted the limp head into his lap, batting away blows. His words twisted sinuously together as he prayed over the still body, dabbing his claws in the remainder of his potion and tracing patterns over her brow.

The mice of Redwall eyed him and their abbess uncertainly. None were too eager to step forward to separate the living mouse from the body of his friend. Eofe sidled up to be shoulder-to-shoulder with Maria, ready at the matron's word. Cyrus produced a second vial, and from it sprinkled yellow powder in the damp patterns on Nova's face.

She sneezed.

And rose.

Supported by the male, Nova stood upright for the first time since her arrival. Abbess Maria inched closer in disbelief, searching the maiden's hooded, golden eyes. She felt her pulse catch. Nova flicked an ear listlessly, and spoke directly to the abbess in that sharp tongue they could not understand. She grabbed the hem of the veil draped carelessly about her ears and swept it over her face

"What has she said?" Maria whispered, reaching out to touch her gown. A black paw snatched out and held her firmly at arm's length and Nova snapped again in her smoky voice.

Maria scrabbled backward as though she'd been burned, and from the way she stumbled breathlessly into Eofe, perhaps she had.

"Abbess," Cyrus's eyes were on his bride. "You will escort us off the abbey grounds to perform the rites. As discussed."

"This is madness," Maria whispered.

Eofe squeezed her shoulder. "Remember his vow, Abbess."

"It wouldn't be possible-"

"A single life is more than we can sacrifice to him and his gods."

The pair had reached the gates, Nova walking slowly but unaided. The abbess and Eofe followed dumbly behind, followed at length by the rest of the abbeydwellers. A few paces beyond the wall the strange mice halted and turned to face their audience.

"In the land where I was born," he spoke firmly, loud enough for the first few ranks of sisters to hear. There was a clamor and murmuring behind them as others fought to listen. "There is a story of two brothers: Mars and Lars. Mars was the crown prince, set to inherit the throne of the nation. Lars, his younger brother, would command the armies and stretch his paw the world over.

They had but one quarrel. It was for the paw of Ione, a prophetess they say was escaped from the mouth of a great dragon, and released into the world to spread the words of the higher gods."

Cyrus drew a small dagger from his belt and cocked the blade at an angle over his shoulder, measuring the time by the light reflecting off its surface.

"Mars took the maiden, citing his rights as the heir. But she had fallen in love with the other brother. Lars, in a rage, took to sea. He was gone a year and a day. He returned, the day that Ione bore a son to Mars. And that very day he stole the bride of his brother and swept her away into the dark ocean, where they were never seen again."

The sun was falling rapidly behind the treeline. Nova was beginning to waver on her footpaws Cyrus spoke softly to the lady, keeping his gaze fixed at the abbess. Nova took up a hum that fell gradually into song. It was a wailing song, mournful if they'd half a mind to call it so. Those nearest the pair shivered, and watched the shifting of the scarlet veil.

"We are all the sons of Mars or Lars. We are all given to violence, or to diplomacy," Cyrus continued, lifting his voice to be heard over the keening. "And we are all the sons of the Blessed Goddess, who drowned in the nameless sea." He caught the abbess's eye and made a sharp gesture. "Abbess Maria? Repeat after me."

He spoke slowly, and carefully. There was a trepidation in his eyes they hadn't seen until now. Abbess Maria repeated the words with some hesitation, and Cyrus translated.

"This is the story as it is told, how the world was torn asunder. I see now a son of Lars, in his paw that of the Goddess. Have mercy on them, oh highest gods."

He gulped visibly and twisted his knife so that its blade laid flat across his forearm and its pommel faced the abbess. "Take my paw," he murmured, so that quietly that she and Eofe almost couldn't hear. "Repeat again after me."

Maria did, stumbling over the syllables, and perfectly in awe as the tension in the falling night twisted like a living thing.

"The Blessed One seeks blood, to prove to her his love."

Cyrus grit his teeth and grasped the abbess's wrist in his free paw and used her pliant hold to slice a shallow cut across the column of his throat. Blood spilled in a thin sheet down his neck and stained his pure white tunic. He ignored Maria's gaping and tugged his dagger back.

"The next words I say, you may only reply _Ay, Ehmet._ "

He allowed the dumbfounded abbess to practice the phrase under her breath a moment before closing his eyes and turning to his bride. Her singing ceased abruptly. He spoke firmly to her, head bowed, and the Abbess replied _Ay, Ehmet._

There were a number of these repetitions. Cyrus would bow, and speak, and rise on each _Ay, Ehmet,_ and each new time he bowed lower until he fell flat on his knees. When speaking his final phrase he held up a paw to quiet Maria.

Nova spoke. Her words fell on those closest to them like ashes. There was a vehemence in her tone, nothing of the tender grace that the bridegroom bore. She lifted the veil, and generations of Redwall sisters afterward would tell of how her eyes had glown with fire for the briefest of moments before she rested a paw on Cyrus's shoulder.

Cyrus's eyes dimmed for half a breath, and when he started back to life he rose and drew Nova close as the new bride gave into a sudden trembling.

"Sister Eofe," she was startled when he spoke to her. "Mother Abbess. You have just witnessed a wedding ceremony that has not been performed in seven generations. "

"Her eyes," the abbess whispered.

"The blessing of the goddess."

Nova began to lean heavier on him, until he lifted her off her paws.

"I can walk away with her now," he continued, looking between Marie and Eofe. He managed to look humble, despite the strength in his voice. "Or you can allow both of us sanctuary while she recovers."

Eofe watched her abbess, so sure what her answer would be that she found herself steeling for conflict. But Maria looked stricken, older than her years, and even weak in the early darkness.

"Mice of Redwall," she finally called. "Make way for your guests."

A cold paw wrapped around Eofe's arm, and she allowed Maria a brief rest against her shoulder.

"Eofe, see the newlyweds to a private dormitory."

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome all! Few short notes: I've got lots of references to Cyrus's native religion and culture- if it's too much or too confusing please let me know. I hope it was easy to catch on to the italic text being his native language, which he speaks of course to Nova as well as when he is stressed or scared. Don't be afraid to comment!


End file.
